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An Army marksman went from Olympic gold medal hopes to a career in ruins after illegally keeping ammunition, a court martial has heard.

Warrant Officer Morgan Cook, 40, who had been tipped to lead Team GB to shooting glory at the London games, admitted illegal possession at his home of thousands of rounds of ammunition at an earlier hearing.

Today at Colchester Military Court Centre, Judge Advocate Emma Peters and a military board ordered he be reduced to the ranks and dismissed him from the military.

They also imposed a nine-month prison sentence suspended for a year.

Judge Peters said: "You are, it is quite clear, an elite British Army marksman.

"That exalted position has been lost as a result of your actions and it is clear you will never compete again.

"Equally though competing at that level ought to have imbued you with a healthy respect for ammunition and its safe-keeping.

"Your actions could have resulted in that ammunition falling into the wrong hands and fuelled the evil of gun crime."

Cook, who received glowing character references from his superiors, has already applied to leave the Army.

The court martial heard that Cook had stored the ammunition to help train himself and a team for the 2012 Olympics.

Simon Reevell, mitigating, said that success at the games had seemed a realistic ambition.

"I can't say if he would have won but, at the time of the London Olympics, his personal best would in fact have been a gold medal score," he added.

"To go from being a good bet for a medal to being here with his career over is, on any view, a shame.

"When everybody else was watching the Olympics, he was waiting for his court martial and we did not have a team in his particular discipline."

Lt Col Alastair Murray, prosecuting, said Cook was arrested in November last year by military police after Jessica Robinson, a sports psychologist, posted a video of a shooting exercise supervised by him on Facebook.

As a civilian, Ms Robinson did not have permission to take part in the exercise, which involved firing live rounds and automatic weapons.

Cook was required to surrender his firearms licence along with any weapons and ammunition.

He surrendered some 16,000 rounds but illegally kept about 30,000.

Because he knew his service house at RAF Henlow, Bedfordshire, was to be searched he buried the ammunition on a nearby firing range alongside Chicksands base.

This was "outside the wire" and the public had access to the area, with a footpath about 500 metres away.

A soldier on a training exercise stumbled across the cache in February while digging a sentry position.

Cook became aware of the find and handed himself in, Lt Col Murray said.

Cook, a warrant officer class two at the Headquarters Defence Intelligence and Security Centre in Chicksands, admitted four charges.

The first was a breach of good order and service discipline by storing rounds of ammunition at his home.

The second related to other calibre rounds, some stored at home and others buried.

The final charges related to allowing a civilian to use a weapon on a firing range.

The married father-of-two has served in the Army for 24 years, completing tours of Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

In June, Cook and Cpl Ian Jack were left out of Team GB despite both achieving qualifying scores.

British Shooting said that the men's scores were ineligible because they had been made during practice and not in designated events.